


Heyr Himna Smiður

by onoheiwa



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dreams, Gods, M/M, Prophetic Dreams, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-24 02:31:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7489791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onoheiwa/pseuds/onoheiwa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He had absorbed the lyric into his very being, the words emblazoned on his heart and seared into his mind after endless years of dreaming. He knew the song better than his own self, a part of him that coursed through his veins and became a thrum through his subconscious in every waking hour, suffusing his sight and his hearing till the world seemed changed, attuned to the melodic chanting in his head. There was music in his essence, a single hymn from yesteryear that had never been encountered in daylight hours, never spoken of to anyone, and that he had never heard the like of since the day of his birth. Nothing was like his song, nothing so majestic or so breathtaking in all the world."</p><p> </p><p>Prompt - The Singer Lost to Time<br/>Write about a character who has the same dream every night: a strange hooded person kneeling before them as they sing a mystifying melody. The catch? One day, on their way home, this character overhears someone across the street humming the song from their dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Heyr himna smithur](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/213399) by Aristhir. 



> This is partially a prompt fill and partially a song fic. The prompt is in the summary of the work and the song is linked above - it's an ancient Icelandic hymn sung by a group called Árstíðir and it is absolutely beautiful. I chose it with the idea in mind that most people peg Celesian culture and language as similar to the Celtic in nature, so a song like this might be one Fai grew up learning, something he would know well enough to sing while walking down the street, like the prompt says; something that Kurogane might hear in a foreshadowing dream.  
> If you pace yourself (slowly) you can read the work and listen to the song at the same time and the words should match up fairly well with the music, but I would listen to it all the way through first just to enjoy it. The quote at the beginning is just filling in the first 10 seconds or so of the video before the singing starts. 
> 
>  
> 
> Oh, and I will actually fill the prompt. Eventually.

“ _I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I'm going to tell it_.”

― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights 

 

Kurogane had been having the same dream every night for as long as he could remember. No images or memories were present, no stories given to be recalled and told in the morn, just a song. There was nothing to see but swirling light in a dark void, gleaming rivers that pulsed and swirled in lazy coils like the aurora in the north but in warm ripples of white and silver rather than the vibrant and colorful streamers in the waking world. There was nothing to touch or smell and even the lights were dim and distant, mere shadows and remnants. There was only sound.

 

Swelling upward and outward, filling the void, was a song from a lost time. It was soft and quiet but took hold of all awareness, all attention, in a gentle embrace that comforted and soothed. The blending of rich, deep voices in an ancient tongue were low and haunting, the telling of a sacred hymn from days long forgotten by man. The harmonies laced in and out of the song, the singers’ words merging and separating as they spoke and breathed and wove, first separately and then as one, entwined as a living tapestry, throbbing slow and steady.

 

It was an unearthly sound, something ethereal and reverent, showered with touches of the empyrean and almost holy in the way it rose and fell with the cadence and rhythm of a heartbeat. It sent chills up the spine and shivers across limbs and skin with its eerie, angelic cry, the supplication of a single voice, high and delicate, that always broke away from the hums of the others, a lilting melody that mesmerized and enraptured the senses as powerfully as the sweet and ghostly summons of a siren. When the cantor called, the words demanded and evoked wonder and devotion, a lay of the heavens in all their glory and solemnity. The notes flickered through the air, stepping lightly from one place to the next in a graceful, twirling dance of fireflies on a twilit night, a slow swirl on the whispering caresses of the wind through the fields. Sorrow was its essence, its purpose, its soul. The gods were silent, it seemed to say, and the prayer echoed against stone cathedrals and hollow caverns and empty shrines, lost to ravenous time and languid acolytes.

 

It played the anthems of sadness and of beauty and of the divine; it sounded like history, like memory, and it spoke of mercy and of aid. Time fell away, the memory of life outside of the dream forgotten while the song was sung, its mystery and beauty an un-ignorable spell threaded into thought and recollection – inexorable, immutable, and abiding.

 

He had absorbed the lyric into his very being, the words emblazoned on his heart and seared into his mind after endless years of dreaming. He knew the song better than his own self, a part of him that coursed through his veins and became a thrum through his subconscious in every waking hour, suffusing his sight and his hearing till the world seemed changed, attuned to the melodic chanting in his head. There was music in his essence, a single hymn from yesteryear that had never been encountered in daylight hours, never spoken of to anyone, and that he had never heard the like of since the day of his birth. Nothing was like his song, nothing so majestic or so breathtaking in all the world.

 

It was the voice of his soul, a melody no one else on earth possessed or knew for it belonged to him and him alone to share as he liked, or treasure within and when he was grown he would decide what to do. It would call to another, maybe, and meld with their soul’s song as a seamless whole. But for now, just for now, his song would remain his alone, a comfort and a balm for his heart, and a chorus and an anthem, sung in his spirit with joy and with dignity and the triumph of the heavens.

 

~~~


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jvUFEmwsig&list=PLxPt9-MK7biyijQAN5kth4Y_j7kpD5laO&index=64 
> 
> This is the song that I think best fits with this chapter. I know that the voices are not male, but the timing works well with and since I was trying to find a song that matched with what I had already written rather than the other way around I think that it works out well.

“Dreams, if they're any good, are always a little bit crazy. ”

― Ray Charles

 

His dream changed one night; a presence entered the empty void, a hooded figure that slowly wandered closer. A voice drifted through the still air, high and gentle as a whispering breeze, the soft notes dancing over his skin as if he could touch them.

 

The figure knelt over him, their face hidden in the vast shadows of the dream and their cloak. They stretched out a hand, pale and graceful, that fluttered over his face and down his chest, twisting eels of light flowing from his fingertips to wriggle lightly in shifting colors before settling against his skin and melting into luminescent, swirling puddles that seeped into his body. He could feel them, reformed and alive, swimming through his veins and tickling his nerves with prickling teeth.

 

Their song grew louder as the light fused with his body, a tingling sensation that traveled down his spine and spread to his fingertips and toes in a ripple of shivers and gooseflesh. He reached for the figure, grasping the dark fabric in a tight grip and pulling them forward, hoping to see their face but the shadows were too deep, the dream too dark and all he saw was the night sky, stars winking into existence from the depths of the other’s cowl. The history and the future of all destinies were flickering in the gaze of the constellations. He saw his story, saw their story, saw the story of the world in those stars, played like a film in an overwhelming tempest of thought and memory until he reeled under the weight of time.

 

The song was different but he knew it and he was singing, joining the other’s song in a balance of ancient fae and deep solemnity, of delicate glass and sturdy stone, of a gentle breeze and a resonating drum. Their melodies coiled together in an amalgamate spiral that climbed toward the heavens, a sacrosanct harmony that echoed across the universe and made ripples of change in the cosmos. Countless voices responded to the elegy, reverberating the foundations of creation itself with a thunderous, hair-raising resonance of power and breathtaking beauty.

 

His bones quaked, his eyes shut against the light of remembrance, the darkness of the dream, the ache of the song – and he knew. He knew the age of the earth, the count of the grains of sand in the ocean, the scent of the sun and the temperature space. He knew the lives of humanity and the true names of the gods and how to create galaxies. For when two souls’ Songs meet and become one then worlds are can be made, and They were the First mates - the Creators, the begetters of the Songs and of all mates and They built new worlds with each cycle in which they met and lived and breathed.

 

He remembered and he quaked with grief and with joy; they had been apart for such a long time. He wept for the memories of his soul, from the meeting in a dream that had not yet become the reality his spirit yearned so desperately for. He sang and he remembered and he dreamt.

 

When he woke, he wiped the tears from his face with an ache in his heart, but he did not remember the dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm slowly building up the history, the plot of this fic with each chapter and I did not really realize how much I was doing so until finishing it. I'm hinting through the dream at a much larger history, something broader than I originally intended to create and now I am feeling as if I may need to write a second piece to this, a companion to expand on the touches of gods and reincarnation that live in this. What do you think?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0wktYBVim8&index=66&list=PLxPt9-MK7biyijQAN5kth4Y_j7kpD5laO
> 
> There is actually not a need for a song with this chapter, but I thought I would stick with the theme and provide one anyway. This one actually only needs the first two minutes or so, there's a brief pause in the song and if you are trying to read along and listen at the same time I would just mute it or pause it at that point. If you read at the right pace the pause in the song will coincide with when the characters cease singing but you won't be able to finish the work before the song picks up again and the rest of the music is unnecessary. 
> 
> Okay, sorry for babbling, you can go read now.

“Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.”

― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

 

The night was still, almost silent. The late hour had left the streets bare and empty, hardly a soul to be seen in any direction. As he left the downtown area the street lamps dimmed and were spaced farther and farther apart, throwing everything into a murky gloom that swallowed up what little light was left. A hush lingered, oppressive and eerie.

 

His eyes darted down the alleys he passed, assessing shadows and alert to threats, a habit forcefully engrained and hard to cast aside. He turned toward every murmur through thin walls, cocked his ear at each howl and screech of angry cats in distant gutters, attuned himself to all sounds and catalogued them all in an instant. His body was tense, shoulders high and tight and his movements controlled and precise with his hand on the hilt of his sword and ready to defend himself at any moment.

 

He always walked thus in the darkness of night when he returned home, traveling through dangerous neighborhoods in the hours when trouble liked best to rear its ugly head. He always remembered how his father had trained him to do such, on nights much like this when pale fog had descended over the town and monsters and vile creatures of all kinds crawled up from their pits to devour sweet things and destroy. His usual cheer would slip quietly to the side and a more serious man would be found for a while, but as the nights wore on he would relax and find the warrior’s calm and then he had sung.

 

Most were songs of war and of honor and of lost comrades; some were of the beauty of the land – it’s lush greenery and clear skies and the heartbreaking allure of the sea; a choice few were of love, of the gentle peace it brings and the powerful passion it stirs and the fulfillment of the heart’s desire; one was of the Songs.

 

His father had sung it rarely but it had always been his favorite and he had soaked it in with a child’s eagerness, memorizing each word, each note, each word it told of how the Songs were a gift from the gods as a promise that no one would ever have to be alone. There would always be one person and one person alone who dearly loved and sang the song that was your Song, that played in your heart and filled your dreams and that was why there were so many songs to sing, so many to choose your favorite from, because every person needed their own.

 

He loved the song and its promise, loved its sweet and hypnotizing melody and as he walked he hummed it softly to himself, letting it soothe his nerves and comfort his mind, allowing the warrior’s calm to wash over his spirit.

 

After a time a new melody began to creep into his mind, a gentle voice that blended with his own. A different song had joined with his and as the singer came closer, their voice louder, the songs harmonized and became one. They were unique, two entirely different sounds both in melody and in language, but together they created something beautiful and whole.

 

It was his Song. He heard the other’s song clearly, finally close enough to discern the lyrics and the melody as a separate piece from the one he rumbled quietly. It was his Song, the one he had heard every night throughout all his years of memory, the one that soothed his heart and made his soul cry out in desperate yearning. It was the melody that was carved into his bones, that his spirit vibrated with every waking hour and now he could hear it with his ears instead of just his mind and he wanted to shout in victory.

 

In shock and excitement he looked up, his throat constricting with hope and cutting off the sound of his humming at the same moment the other’s voice ceased as well. The loss of the Song from his hearing sent an ache to his heart but he had turned his focus to its source and looked up to the figure across the street. Sparkling blue eyes with the depths of age and hope and wonder looked back at him and a veil of golden hair lay in loose waves over his pale face. An expression that mirrored his own was there and the man stood frozen on the sidewalk, his lips still formed around the half-spoken word of his song.

 

It was long moments before he could overcome his surprise and follow the urging of his soul to stride quickly across the empty road and stand before the singer, his soul’s mate and the one with his Song.

 

He breathed. “Hey.”

 

The other had been watching him with wide eyes and finally lost the aura of amazement surrounding him. He looked up at him with wonder and tentative hope and profound relief and smiled. “Hey, yourself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that is all I really intended to do, was fill the prompt, but it kind of became something a little deeper. What do you think? Does it need more?

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](onoheiwa.tumblr.com).


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